I confess I set out to watch Veere Di Wedding with some trepidation.
Honestly, I am exhausted from the parade of so-called ‘women-centric’ Bollywood
films in recent years by directors who do not understand or care a fig about
women but smelt an opportunity as the rights of our half of the population
moved from the inner folds of newspapers to Page 1 and television prime time
after the December 2012 Delhi gangrape. When feminism is a fad and a formula
for you, not a conviction, obviously you will churn out empty vessels such as Akira or stereotypes like Tanu in the Tanu Weds Manuflicks.

Veere Di
Wedding is none
of that. Director Shashanka Ghosh’s new film is about real, relatable women.
They fight everyday battles, laugh and cry by turns, trip and fall as human
beings often do and pick themselves up each time, all the while defying not
just social strictures but also Bollywood’s boring cliché of what constitutes a
‘strong woman’ that even good films like NH10and Mardaani did not entirely
shake off. In the world according to Hindi cinema’s aspiring or fake feminists,
if a woman is tough, she must compulsorily smoke heavily, drink, swear
incessantly and if possible, be sexually promiscuous – teetotalers in particular
apparently do not count.

Thankfully, Shashanka Ghosh, his
writers Nidhi Mehra and Mehul Suri are not faking anything. Their Kalindi,
Avni, Sakshi and Meera are not trying to impress us with what other shallow
minds have perceived as mardaani
(masculine), hip habits worth striving for, nor are they founts of what is
conventionally considered feminine virtue. They simply are who they are.

These are women with agency,
flaws, humanity and, above all, a sense of humour they often turn on
themselves. Their vocabulary and behaviour are not borrowed from American
serials that are often tapped by unimaginative, mindless writers who see the US
as the Mecca of coolth and liberalism. They speak and act like educated,
city-bred, wealthy or middle-class Indian
women might and do.

The bride and buddy (veer) in the wedding of the title is
Kalindi (Kareena Kapoor Khan) who has returned home to Delhi from Australia
with her boyfriend for what turns out to be a garish, extravagant shaadi that his parents insist on organising,
ignoring the couple’s wishes. Kalindi’s prospective saas-sasur – wealthy, unsophisticated, conservative, smothering
their son with affection and attention – are a sharp contrast to her suave
father (Anjum Rajabali) with whom she has barely had a relationship since he
married after her mother’s death.

Of course her wedding is
incomplete without her childhood friends, each grappling with their own
problems. Avni (Sonam Kapoor Ahuja) is a divorce lawyer who sees marriage and
babies as the next step for herself though she does not appreciate her mother
being on her case about it. Sakshi (Swara Bhasker) is a mess, a creature of
unhealthy propensities who is dawdling about her millionaire parents’ home,
refusing to tell them why she left London, dumping the man she had picked and
married in a rush.

Meera (Shikha Talsania) loves her
husband and baby, hates her over-sized physique, seems incapable of staying
away from food and drink, but steers clear of the father who objected to her
choice of life partner.

By the end of the film’s running
time, life has changed significantly for each of the four.

Romantic comedies, not just in
India, tend to underline the indispensability and inevitability of marriage, or
at the very least a romantic relationship, in every individual’s journey. Veere Di Wedding is about having a
choice at every turn. Its achievement is that it arrives at this point without
any dialoguebaazi or overt effort at messaging.

There is a tendency in the
liberal public discourse to dismiss the concerns of women like Kalindi, Avni,
Sakshi and Meera because of their apparent privilege. Ghosh and his writers
refuse to underplay their wealth, instead occasionally emphasising it, as with
that scene where they exit a building housing some of Delhi’s most expensive
clothing stores and one of them grumbles about the forbidding cost of
designerwear. Sure, they visit designer outlets but that does not make their
problems any less pressing or their stories any less worth telling.

Veere Di
Wedding is impactful
especially because the lead quartet are enjoying themselves even while their
film remains an unapologetic commentary on the lives of women in this setting.
They are funny, these four. Funnier still is the picture in my head of the
notoriously narrow-minded Censor Board viewing Indian female characters openly
speaking of masturbation and sexual droughts, and – Hey Bhagwan, hamari sanskriti ko koi bachaao! – de-romanticising
motherhood, in addition to discussing careers, marriage and kids.

Yes, this happens. In a
mainstream Hindi film.

Without appearing to strain a
muscle, Ghosh and his writing team end up smashing more barriers with laughter
than a million weepy, vacuous Akiras
could. It’s enough to make you want to forgive them for repeatedly getting
Sakshi to equate courage with having “balls”, and to forgive the producers for
the surfeit of product placements in a single film, one for a car too
in-your-face to be ignored.

Kareena delivers a neatly
restrained performance as Kalindi. Sonam is sweet and equally convincing with
her character’s confusions as with her ultimate decisiveness. Swara is born to
comedy and takes to this glossy set-up – vastly different from the two
wonderful, low-budget films she has headlined so far, Nil Battey Sannata and Anaarkali of Aarah – like a fish to water. Shikha is pleasant and as impactful here
as she was in Wake Up Sid back in
2009. Remind me again why we do not see her more often in films?

The supporting cast includes a
bunch of reliable actors. Their performances cannot be faulted though the
writing of some of their characters leaves much to be desired. The rigmarole of
anger, fights and misunderstandings between Kalindi, her father and uncle are
not as well articulated as the rest of the story. Ekavali Khanna as Kalindi’s
Dad’s second wife Paromita and Edward Sonnenblick as Meera’s husband are the
worst hit – he is gora, she has a
weird laugh, there is nothing more to either of them. C’mon.

This is not about screen time,
but about depth and detail in brevity. Just that one scene in which Avni and
her mother (Neena Gupta) have a heart to heart conversation tells us all that
we need to know about the older lady and their relationship. Kalindi’s fiancé
Rishab too is treated with empathy, and actor Sumeet Vyas fashions him into a
congenial fellow.

I have heard some chatter
describing Veere Di Wedding as
“India’s answer to Sex and the City”. For god’s sake,do not undervalue this film. The women of Sex and the City may have been entertaining, but at the end of the
day, let’s face it, these were their primary preoccupations: the next lay, the
next boyfriend, a husband. Kalindi, Avni, Sakshi and Meera are far more forward
thinking. What they do have in common with Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and
Miranda is their hilarious frankness about subjects so far untouched by
Bollywood and an endearing bond that is far more believable than the clingy
relationships shared all these decades by numerous gentlemen yaars and dosts in Hindi cinema.

Shashanka Ghosh has already worked
with Sonam in Khoobsurat, which
introduced Fawad Khan to Bollywood. In Veere
Di Wedding he proves yet again his ability to tell sensible, engaging
stories about women without being painfully self-conscious about his
sensitivity or their gender, without elevating female characters to devi status, but presenting them to the
world as they/we are, as human beings, good and bad, with the ability to laugh
our heads off even as we deal with the multiple challenges this damned
male-dominated world and our own failings throw at us.

As lyricist Anvita Dutt puts it
in Veere veere, which is part of the
film’s soundtrack:

Hum to aise

Toote phoote se

Dham dhadaam se

Din dahaade

Baithe baithe

Gir gaye muh ke bal yun

Humne socha hume to bhai sab pata hai

Mil rahi is galat faimi ki saza hai

(A rough précis: We are flawed.
We have fallen flat on our faces as a result. We are suffering the consequences
of having assumed that we know everything.)

Bless you Ghosh & Co for
saying it like it is. Bless you ladies for signing up for this.

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About Me

Anna MM Vetticad is an award-winning journalist, journalism teacher and author of the critically acclaimed bestseller The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic, an overview of the Hindi film industry presented through an account of a year in which she watched every single Bollywood film released in India’s National Capital Region. A journalist since 1994, she has worked with India Today, The Indian Express and Headlines Today. At HT she hosted her own interview show Star Trek which drew all India’s eminent entertainment personalities. While Anna has spent most of her career as a behind-the-scenes editorial person, she has also reported on most major Indian entertainment and lifestyle events and several international ones including Cannes and the Oscars, in addition to being the film critic for Headlines Today. She is currently reporting and writing for multiple publications on cinema and social issues with a focus on gender concerns. The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic is available on amazon.com, ebay.in, flipkart.com, ombooksinternational.com, ombooks.com, infibeam.com, homeshop18.com and dialabook.in among other websites, and in stores across India. Twitter: @annavetticad